Welcome to another fine installment of Reviews from my Couch. I’ve been busy as of late, so I have neglected my duties of bringing hard-hitting movie reviews to all of my loyal viewers *ahem.* This installment is about the hilariously awful D-WAR, or as all us crackers know it, DRAGON WARS.
Many moons ago (2002, to be exact) Korean director Shim Hyung-rae decided that he wanted to follow up his first masterpiece YONGARY: MONSTER OF THE DEEP with another topic that is so prevalent in today’s culture: dragons fucking each other up. He cut together a tech reel that featured badly-rendered CG dragons and released it at conventions and Laundromats across the globe.This thing was an internet inside joke for many years, as every few months or so, a trailer would be released that promised it would hit theaters summer of 2005. It was almost like a fever dream: did I really just see this trailer? As the summers came and went without D-WAR gracing us with it’s presence, many began to give up on it, relegating it to Developmental Hell. Somehow it found a way out of Hell and (briefly) into theaters during the Shit-Fest Dumping Ground known as "September" of 2007.
Let’s just get this out of the way: this is a piece of shit from start to finish. When it comes to dragons, I consider myself an apologist on how awful they transition from my imagination to the big screen. DRAGONHEART wasn’t bad, but other than a cameo in HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE, dragons have been given the shaft with horrible dreck like ERAGON. This is bullshit, I say, because besides lawn gnomes and ninja, I can’t think of another cool concept that is more entertaining.
So I guess this shit is based on a 500 year old legend that involves good and bad dragon spirits trying to level up to a higher form. Instead of doing what any other dork would do and grind away in a troll cave until you gather enough XP, these assholes decide to sacrifice some maiden unfortunate enough to be born with a detailed henna tattoo of a dragon when she turns 20. Some asshole old man is charged with making sure the good OogieBoogie (the dragon spirits are seriously called something that sounds like that) is able to level up. He recruits a young lad who grows up to be all emo and shit and falls in love with the victim/girl. When she finally turns twenty, some awful Sauron/ Power Ranger villain arrives with a legion of rocket-launching dinosaurs and tears up feudal Korea. Yes, you just read ’rocket-launching dinosaurs.’ The two love-birds run away and then commit suicide, thus negating either dragon the ability to level up.
See how quickly I got through the backstory of this shit? One paragraph. That’s paring down about twenty minutes of film. This is all sandwiched between a random opening shot of some fucked up golf course that requires the attention of expert cub reporter Jason Behr. This guy is our hero, and he is a terrible actor. I used to think he was okay on Roswell, but that’s because I figured he was playing Max as a cardboard cutout on purpose. Nope, the guy has about as much charisma as Terry Schiavo (too soon?). Anyway, I guess Behr is the reincarnation of our emo protector from 500 years previous. He happens upon this information 12 years previous in a hilariously awful scene: his father drags him to a pawn shop to try to get a few bucks from an ancient dagger. The shopkeep, played by Robert Forster (?!) is giving the guy a hard time and only wants to give him 10 bucks for it. Behr wanders around until he finds a badly CG-rendered treasure chest that opens up and reveals…something to him. I’m not being purposefully vague, I don’t know what the hell it was showing on the screen. Forster realizes the kid opened the chest, then FAKES A HEART ATTACK to get the father to leave for a while. He then proceeds to tell the 12 year old boy that he will one day be complicit in the sacrifice of a young girl so a dragon can reach puberty. Awesome.
Cut to the present and…you know what? I think I’m done trying to make sense of this garbage. This plays like any other type of story about some ’protector.’ Think of the evil dragon as the Terminator. Behr is Kyle Reese. In fact, the girl in question is actually named Sara so that makes shit easier. Behr is trying to use his keen reporter skillz to locate Sara. Sara is conveniently brought to his attention when she is assaulted outside of a bar and Robert Forster randomly appears and dispatches the thugs (and I do mean random.) Some other reporter picks up on her case, and then Behr takes his story from him. What a douche! She ends up in the hospital after the assault, where her ethnic friends try to meet her but aren’t allowed in by the equally ethnic nurse. They go home only to find the Terminator/Evil Dragon kickin’ it by the pool. They get eaten, which somehow is blamed on Sara, and she’s being quarantined or some shit. Behr finally finds her, the Terminator follows them to the hospital, crashes through, they run away. Now repeat that about four more times and you have the rest of the movie. These two constantly put other people in danger by going to very public places to hide from a fucking dragon.
The rest of the movie is cat and mouse and the advertised military vs. dragon/rocket-launching dinosaurs only make up a few minutes of the running time. They re-use the same pilot death scene about three times, but other than that, not too exciting. It really makes me appreciate Michael Bay more after seeing how uninteresting the carnage is. The heroes finally get captured by Sauron and taken…somewhere. It looks like Mt. Doom, seriously, and it never says where the hell they end up. Sara’s about to be eaten by the Naughty Dragon when Behr yells out, somehow unlocking some ancient Deus Ex Machina within himself, wiping out everybody but the Evil Dragon. Then, out of nowhere, the Good Dragon finally makes an appearance. They fight for a while, but just like at the end of Ang Lee’s HULK, it’s so dark you can’t see shit. Sara sacrifices herself so the Good Dragon can reach lvl. 2 Dragon, and the Bad Dragon is vanquished. Her ghost says she’ll love Behr for eternity with about as much conviction as I use to order tater tots at Sonic, and Behr is left in Middle Earth or some shit. They seriously just end it with him watching the sun rise in some unknown desert location.
I can’t believe I have devoted this much type to this piece of shit. It’s not even enjoyable in a "shitty B-movie" way. It’s not put together well, and you’ll be bored about ten minutes in. I hope Robert Forster got a really big paycheck or at least some ball-cupping because he is severely wasted. Don’t give in to the awesomeness of dragons. You have been warned.
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